Orange
by SocialMoth
Summary: It's only a color, after all.


**June 2010 – A weird little one-shot I constructed during free time in AP Calculus 'round about the start of May, during a slow week.**

**Should say; I'm going out on a few limbs here. I haven't read Fruits Basket beyond a couple chapters into Volume 10, so I don't really know much about Yuki and Kyou's backstories beyond what I've read and what I've gleaned from fanfiction (like that's the best source, right? XD). So... please forgive me if I got something wrong. This was purely for fun.  
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**I've never written in third-person, present tense before - I think I rather like it. :)  
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**Disclaimer: Fruits Basket belongs to Natsuki Takaya  
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* * *

Grown-ups at the house insist on dressing Yuki in blues and greys, and hues of violet, but the color Yuki likes is orange.

He thinks "orange" is an unflattering name for the color. The color is too bright and energetic to have such a plain-sounding, ugly word for it. He wants to call it something else. Something not "orange."

He hears the adults talking in hushed voices and disdaining murmurs about – they call it many things. They call it a monster; they call it "that thing;" they call it the Cat. They never call the person – for it must be a person to carry "Cat" with such significance – by name, but Yuki is curious to know. No one indulges him when he asks; listening more intently to the burgeoning family gossip eventually tells him, "Kyou."

When Yuki finally sees Kyou, and watches him from a distance, he takes in the vibrant orange color of his hair and the matching shade of his eyes and thinks it's beautiful. He realizes he's looking at the physical realization of what he always means whenever he mentions to anyone who will listen that "orange" is such a bad name for it.

Yuki can't get close, because neither Akito nor anyone else will let him. But he remembers. He can't get that color out of his head, and soon he starts calling it "Kyou."

Then he learns that Kyou, the Cat of the Chinese Zodiac, hates him. They had never met or had any contact at all, and he _hates_ him. Because Yuki is the Rat, Kyou blames him for everything bad in his life. He wants nothing to do with the dirty Rat.

Any time they cross paths, Yuki tries to explain himself and apologize for whatever he's done (what the Rat's done), but he soon stops. Kyou makes it clear every time, how much he hates him, how he would like nothing more than to see the Rat dead. It's easy for Yuki to hate Kyou: Kyou screams at him for no reason; Kyou tries to hurt him; Kyou laughs at him when he's stricken by another bronchial attack. Yuki learns how easily he can beat Kyou at martial arts, and the hatred becomes bitter contempt.

When Yuki can't eat a satsuma because of its color, he knows something is wrong. He needs to get away from it; he needs to get away from his family completely, and he finds asylum at Shigure's house until Kyou's presence follows him there, too. And then he leaves with Kazuma-shihan not a moment too soon.

Two months after Kyou leaves, Yuki wakes early on a Saturday, thinking it's Sunday because he's never woken up feeling so relaxed on a school day before. He rolls over and looks around his room, and sees the wall is painted a vibrant orange. Blinking, he slips from under the covers and treads to the window, squinting at a vibrant horizon and the sunrise streaming through the trees to gently light his room. He looks at his wall again; it's such a _beautiful_ color.

He hasn't been able to think that way about orange for years...

Sleep pulls at his eyelids and he glances back at his alarm clock. He doesn't _need_ to be up for another hour, so he flops back onto his bed and falls fast asleep again.

The splash of orange is gone from his wall when he rolls groggily over to turn off his alarm. Blinking at the spot, he wonders if he had perhaps dreamt his thoughts and is now coming to his senses from them.

Orange follows him everywhere that day.

Orange, like the yolks of the fresh eggs that Shigure places at the table to mix with their rice.

Orange, like the flesh of the ripe apricot he packs in Yuki's lunch.

Orange, like the glow of the sunset when Yuki walks home late from student council duties; and he knows he never dreamt that early-morning observation.

He walks through the door smiling, and Shigure never finds out why.

As he gets into bed that night, Yuki finally understands the reason.

"Orange" doesn't mean "Kyou." It never did.

Orange is only a color, after all.

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**Random afterthought - The loanword, "orenji," doesn't sound much better... and I imagine before that, the Japanese used something akin to "mikan-iro" ("mikan" is like an orange, "iro" means color), which sounds cooler, but I don't know enough Japanese to aptly judge if it's a cool name for the color. So I guess, for all intents and purposes, this concept works best in English. XD This is me, babbling.**

**It doesn't wrap up as nicely as I would like it to, but I guess I should recognize by now that whenever I do a random one-shot, it _will_ have a strange ending. XP**

**Thanks for reading. You know the drill. ;) [gently nudges you toward "Review" button]  
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